Computing systems are currently in wide use. Some computing systems include remote server environments that host services that can be accessed by client computing systems. The client computing systems, themselves, may run one or more applications as well. The applications may be client components of the service hosted at the remote server environment, or they may be other applications.
The client computing systems often generate user interfaces for interaction by users. When a user encounters a problem with an application (such as an issue which degrades or inhibits the performance of the application), the user may use a reporting mechanism to report the issue or problem to a support mechanism. For instance, the support mechanism may be a support service that connects users with support engineers or other support personnel in order to attempt to address issues or problems encountered by the users. Often, the support person does not have enough information to quickly discover the root cause of the issue, and normally there is not enough information available to do so automatically.
Users often attempt to address the problem, themselves, by navigating their way through a help or troubleshooting flow in the application. Whether the user does this, or contacts a support person, the user's description of the problem is often not enough to diagnose the problem. This results in a great deal of trial and error, and back and forth communications between the support person and the user, before a solution can be found, if one can even be found.
Some applications collect general log information every time the user encounters a certain error condition (such as an error condition that is detected by code or triggered by a user clicking a “help/report bug” button, or similar). In either of these cases, the information that is available for collection and for use in diagnosing the issue is information that is stored in memory, such as in general logs.
In other scenarios, the user may open a support ticket with a support organization. The support engineers (or other support personnel at the support organization) may have data collection tools that they then ask the user to download and run, in order to collect data. Again, this creates a great deal of back and forth traffic between the user and the support person. Similarly, the data collection tools are only downloaded and run, well after the user has encountered the problem.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.